Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 delivers a disastrous campaign, but its tight multiplayer, constant dopamine hits and chaotic Zombies mode keep the rest of the package surprisingly fun
Call of Duty campaigns are supposed to feel like an event. You sit down in November, pick Veteran difficulty like a yearly ritual, and brace yourself for that familiar mix of big spectacle, clean pacing, tight gunfights and a couple of signature Black Ops mind twists. And when we talk Black Ops, we talk about moments that mess with your head but still make sense in the world around them. You know, the “What do the numbers mean Mason?” kind of weirdness. Or even the insane mannequin and zombie mission from Black Ops 6 that went completely off the rails but still felt grounded in the post-Cold War fever dream that game built so well.
Black Ops 7 looks at all of that and basically says, what if we take the hallucination bits and stretch them across an entire campaign, glue it together with a live service co-op structure, sprinkle health bars on all enemies, force players online, add loot tiers, remove difficulty choice entirely and pray that analytics say this is what players want.
It is wild. Not in the good way.
The moment the game boots up, the campaign throws you straight into a lobby. No difficulty select, no pacing, no atmosphere. Just a menu that looks like Warzone. That alone feels wrong. Picking Veteran is part of the culture. It sets the tone. Here you just get plopped into a co-op session and told to deal with it.
You pick Solo and immediately feel like you have walked into the wrong room. Enemies have health bars. You have armor plates. Guns have colors. There are boss fights. There are no checkpoints. It's always online, you can't pause and if you idle too long, you get kicked out of the game. Everything feels tuned for two to four players melting enemies together, not a single player actually trying to play this like a campaign.
Then the story hits you. If we can even call it a story. The hallucination angle isn't used to strengthen the narrative, it replaces the narrative entirely. You do not feel confused in an interesting Black Ops way, you feel confused because nothing makes sense and the game never tries to tie it together. It's worse than the worst Call of Duty campaign... yeah, worse than "Train go boom" campaign.
And then there is the absolute gut punch: what they did to Vorkuta. One of the most iconic missions ever made, reduced to this fever dream nonsense that adds nothing and respects nothing. It is honestly depressing.
The boss fights make it even worse. One of them is a massive mutated flower thing that looks like it was ripped out of a Resident Evil game, except without the tension, without the design quality and without the cool factor. It is just a giant bullet sponge you circle around dumping mags into. Resident Evil bosses work because they are crafted with intention and escalation. This one is just there because someone thought “boss fight” equals “engagement”.
And then the giant Michael Rooker boss fight. I still cannot believe that is a real sentence. It feels like fan fiction written by someone who only saw Black Ops memes instead of playing the games. Merle go boom indeed.
The campaign does have visually impressive levels, but spectacle with no emotional weight is just noise. The reuse of the new Warzone map for multiple missions also screams “content pipeline synergy” instead of handcrafted campaign design. It all feels empty and you truly like it was designed by a committee that never played Black Ops.
After finishing it, you unlock Endgame, which is basically the open world zombies mode from MW3 with a thinner coat of paint. I bounced off it immediately.
Thankfully once you leave the campaign behind, the tone shifts completely. Multiplayer actually feels great, as expected. The gunplay is tight, the movement has that perfect COD snappiness and the overall feel is smooth.
The biggest surprise is the new wall jump mechanic. It sounds like a gimmick at first, but once it clicks, it becomes a nasty tool for outplays. You bounce off a wall, angle yourself mid air and drop onto players tucked in their little hidey spots. It adds vertical tricks without turning the whole game into jetpack chaos. When you get the timing down, it feels fantastic.
Most of the maps are returning classics, which means they play well because they always have. They are familiar, predictable and flow the way COD veterans expect. What I always like about Call of Duty multiplayer is how the game constantly showers you with rewards. Every match is a flood of level ups, attachment unlocks, weapon progression, camo unlocks, challenge completions, emblem unlocks and some other bar filling in the corner. It does not matter if you had a great match or a terrible one, something always pops up saying you achieved something. Everything is tuned to spike your dopamine with tiny rewards, rapid feedback and constant motion. And honestly, it works. You finish a match, see five things ding on screen and suddenly you want to play one more.
Look, I've always said this in all my Call of Duty reviews, I am not be best person to judge the multiplayer, as I rarely stick around and play it for months on end. Check what some content creators, that basically play COD multiplayer for a living, say about the game, how it feels, how it plays and then decide for yourself.
What I, unc kraideral, can say to you is this, whenever the game asks “Did you like the last match?”, you hit "0 - Not at all", the next lobby is literally a vacation. The SBMM gods give you a break and fill your lobby with players who look like they are playing with oven mitts. You get a match full of dopamine, everything feels smooth, and for a moment you remember why you love COD multiplayer. Now I wish that the game had a better matchmaking system, a simpler one, no skill based bullshit, however you, I and everyone else knows that is not going to happen.
Zombies is easily the most fun part of the whole package. There is a drivable car now and it becomes your lifeline. You can upgrade it, armor it up and even attach a Pack a Punch machine to the back so you always have your upgraded guns on demand. Rolling into a horde with a mobile Pack a Punch strapped to your trunk is hilarious and genuinely clever.
The map is big and layered. You roam around, complete tasks to get the wonder weapons, run into mini bosses, and slowly carve a path through the chaos. And again, even when you do not fully understand what each system does, the core loop is timeless. Pack a Punch guns, empty mags into zombies, repeat. If you enjoy the primal joy of mowing down undead mobs with an overpowered weapon, this mode delivers.
Dead Ops 4 is the pure arcade energy I did not know I needed. You are shredding zombies from a top down angle, then suddenly you are in a side scroller, then a light gun sequence, then you become a tank or a helicopter. It is stupid fun and I loved every chaotic minute of it.
Black Ops 7 is a beautiful game. The cutscenes are absurdly good. Facial animation, lighting, camera work, production value, everything screams Hollywood money. The team clearly worked at a very high level.
Which makes it even more painful that the campaign they built around all this tech is so directionless. The cinematography is great. The engine is great. And yet the campaign around it feels like someone dropped a stack of ideas into a blender and clicked puree.
On PS5 the game runs smooth, loads fast and multiplayer performance is rock solid. Zombies holds up well even with huge hordes on screen.
Black Ops 7 is a strange, mixed experience. The campaign is a complete mess. Not the fun kind of messy, but the kind that makes you ask how many meetings were skipped or how many analytics dashboards were misunderstood. But the rest of the package is not like that. Multiplayer movement and gunfeel continue to be top tier. The wall jump adds a fresh twist. The reward shower keeps you locked in. Zombies is pure comfort food with and Dead Ops 4 is chaotic joy.
So the verdict is simple. If you are buying Black Ops 7 for the campaign, this is going to hurt. If you are here for multiplayer or Zombies, you might be in for a great time. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a PS5 via a promo copy provided by PR. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is available on PlayStation, PC and Xbox.
